The World Wide Web (“the Web”) is a medium for making content available to requesting users, also known as “publishing” content. A Web publisher may provide content of various types, including visual Web pages having textual and static visual contents, as well as such other content such as animated images and audio and video sequences. The relatively low cost of publishing content on the Web enables many organizations and individuals to act as Web publishers.
To access content made available on the Web, a user typically directs a Web client program, or “browser,” executing on his or her computer system to obtain and display a particular unit of content. Units of content are each identified by an address, also called a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL. The user may direct the browser to obtain and display a unit of content by directly entering the URL for the unit of content, or by selecting a link or bookmark with which the URL is associated.
Internet advertising is a practice in which a Web publisher adds an advertising message or other content provided by a third party advertiser to the content provided by the Web publisher in exchange for payment or other consideration from the advertiser. For example, a Web-based travel agency may pay the publisher of a Web site directed to tips for travelers to add a banner advertisement for the Web-based travel agency to some of the Web pages comprising the Web site. Such a banner advertisement typically presents visual information promoting the advertiser that takes up a portion of the area of the Web page. Some banner advertisements further constitute a link to a web site associated with the advertiser, so that the user may click anywhere within the banner advertisement to display, or “click through to,” that Web site, and perform additional actions there, such as purchasing a product or registering with the advertiser Web site. When such additional actions are performed, it is said that a “conversion” has occurred.
In the terminology of Web advertising, a particular banner advertisement may be called a “creative” or a “advertising message.” The different locations on Web pages of publisher Web sites that the publisher makes available for advertising are called “placements.” An instance of presenting a particular creative in a particular placement for a particular use is called an “impression.” When a publisher enters into an advertising agreement with an advertiser in which the advertiser purchases for a single price the opportunity to display a certain number of impressions in each of a number of placements, these placements and impressions are said to constitute a “cost package.”
As computer use, and particularly the use of the Web, becomes more and more prevalent, the volume of Internet advertising presented grows larger and larger. As this volume continues to increase, the need to optimize the effectiveness of advertising increases significantly.
In this connection, it is now common for an advertiser to mount a campaign for an advertiser's cause, in which it presents a number of different “alternative” advertising messages for the cause in each of a number of different placements. Indeed, many advertising campaigns utilize multiple cost packages of placements purchased from multiple publishers.
Such an extensive campaign can be difficult to manage in an active manner. In particular, it can be difficult to determine whether to increase or decrease the number of impressions presented in a particular cost package, whether to increase or decrease the number of impressions presented in a particular placement, and whether to increase or decrease the rate at which a particular creative is presented.
Accordingly, a facility for automatically and dynamically optimizing the use of resources in an advertising campaign would have significant utility.